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A carregar... Rat Island: Predators in Paradise and the World's Greatest Wildlife Rescue (2011)por William Stolzenburg
A carregar...
Adira ao LibraryThing para descobrir se irá gostar deste livro. Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro. So much of this book is chilling and horrifying and graphic- be warned that if you have a hard time reading about teeming waves of rodents leaving carnage in their wake, you may want to be careful with this one. A tale worth reading- it's about hubris and inattention and making things worse under the guise of making them better. It's also, gladly, about learning from mistakes sometimes. And doing better over time. Well worth reading if you are the conservation-minded sort. It's hard to characterize a book about killing some animals in order to save others "enjoyable," but insofar as that's possible, this was a very enjoyable account of rat (pig, goat, fox, cat) eradication on islands whose native birds are threatened by introduced predators. Stolzenburg raises this moral dilemma but does not explore it as deeply as I'd have liked. I'm not opposed to ecosystem restoration, but would like to see both sides explored by anyone involved. Given that brodifacoum is not a humane poison, I would have liked to learn whether effective alternatives are under development. Snakes are not featured as introduced predator-pests in this account, so see Sacks's [b:The Island of the Colorblind|305606|The Island of the Colorblind|Oliver Sacks|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1223675900s/305606.jpg|386252] to learn about brown tree snakes' predation of avifauna on Guam. A minor nitpick: The eponymous Rat Island is in the Aleutians, not at all the biome of the palm trees depicted on the fanciful cover illustration. Many environmental books have an eat your vegetables feel as they portray humans destroying nature. And, if you read enough of them, it's rare to come across something original, a repetition of bad things leading to a loss of hope for the future. This book is different. It's about a few people who have saved entire species from extinction by removing invasive species from islands. It could be as simple as shooting all the pigs on an island in an afternoon, or a massive helicopter campaign to poison millions of rats over the course of months. It's very rewarding, both the removal of the pests and the aftermath as native species return from the brink of extinction. I also supplemented using Google Maps as a visual geography of some of the wildest islands on the globe. These islands, which I'd never heard of before, are now part of my mental map of the world in picture, name and events. I'd normally read this book in three days but was so enthralled it took only a day and a half. Great story, great writing, educational and cutting edge developments. If I was in college this book would inspire me to take up a new career, globe trotting to remote islands and saving species in one fell swoop. Of course the idea has caught on with others and is gaining momentum by the year. Go humans. sem críticas | adicionar uma crítica
"Rat Island rises from the icy gray waters of the Bering Sea, a mass of volcanic rock covered with tundra, midway between Alaska and Siberia. Once a remote sanctuary for enormous flocks of seabirds, the island gained a new name when shipwrecked rats colonized, savaging the nesting birds by the thousands. Now, on this and hundreds of other remote islands around the world, a massive-and massively controversial-wildlife rescue mission is under way.Islands, making up just 3 percent of Earth's landmass, harbor more than half of its endangered species. These fragile ecosystems, home to unique species that evolved in peaceful isolation, have been catastrophically disrupted by mainland predators-rats, cats, goats, and pigs ferried by humans to islands around the globe. To save these endangered islanders, academic ecologists have teamed up with professional hunters and semiretired poachers in a radical act of conservation now bent on annihilating the invaders. Sharpshooters are sniping at goat herds from helicopters. Biological SWAT teams are blanketing mountainous isles with rat poison. Rat Island reveals a little-known and much-debated side of today's conservation movement, founded on a cruel-to-be-kind philosophy.Touring exotic locales with a ragtag group of environmental fighters, William Stolzenburg delivers both perilous adventure and intimate portraits of human, beast, hero, and villain. And amid manifold threats to life on Earth, he reveals a new reason to hope"-- Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
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Google Books — A carregar... GénerosSistema Decimal de Melvil (DDC)333.95Social sciences Economics Economics of land & energy Hydrospheric, Atmospheric, and Biospheric Resources Biosphere and Biospheric ResourcesClassificação da Biblioteca do Congresso dos EUA (LCC)AvaliaçãoMédia:
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A good book, and a good read, if you can look past the occasional passages of overblown prose.
Read July 2014 ( )